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拍品專文
In the present painting, Francis Newton Souza depicts an abstraction of his immediate North London surroundings around Belsize Park and Hampstead Heath, where he lived and worked during the 1950s and 60s. Souza's landscapes of the early 1960s become progressively more abstract and gestural, giving more of an impression of an environment than a literal description of a place. Souza uses his iconic thick, black, twisting line to articulate corniced buildings and piercing steeple like chimneys, alluding to the Catholic architecture which appears in so much of his oeuvre. The rich palette of blues, greens and red-browns are reminiscent of stained glass windows found in churches, further alluding to the Catholic imagery that permeated his practice.
Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza's townscapes as "singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions." They are the "congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors." (J. Swaminathan, 'Souza's Exhibition', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 31)
Painted in 1962, Souza's Untitled (Landscape) epitomises the dynamism of his works in this period of transition. The bold geometric windows and doors so integral to Souza's landscapes of the 1950s now jostle for space in the picture plane with commanding trees liberated from the structuralism he championed earlier. This painting is a chromatic collision of contradictions; it is gestural yet expressive, controlled yet abstract, representational yet symbolic. This seminal series of landscapes demonstrates the stylistic tensions which make Souza such an instinctive innovator.
These contradictions mirror the inherent tension between nature and civilisation, as Souza's landscape oscillates between the lyrical, the sublime and the malevolent. His works, which often depict the sky as an equally viscous force against the buildings and trees, become treatises on the conflating powers of God, man and the natural world. Rooftops cut sharply into the translucent, glowing morning sky, suggesting not harmony, but a tumultuous battle between dissonant elements, emphasised through the violent brushstroke and dramatic palette. Juxtaposing naturalism with reverential expression, Souza represents the landscape as a scene of primordial power. This work is abstract perhaps not in appearance but in its existential undercurrents. Humanity is conspicuously absent from the metropolis, where religion, modernity and nature coexist in perpetual struggle.
Jagdish Swaminathan describes Souza's townscapes as "singularly devoid of emotive inhibitions." They are the "congealed visions of a mysterious world. Whether standing solidly in enamelled petrification or delineated in thin colour with calligraphic intonations, the cityscapes of Souza are purely plastic entities with no reference to memories or mirrors." (J. Swaminathan, 'Souza's Exhibition', Lalit Kala Contemporary 40, New Delhi, March 1995, p. 31)
Painted in 1962, Souza's Untitled (Landscape) epitomises the dynamism of his works in this period of transition. The bold geometric windows and doors so integral to Souza's landscapes of the 1950s now jostle for space in the picture plane with commanding trees liberated from the structuralism he championed earlier. This painting is a chromatic collision of contradictions; it is gestural yet expressive, controlled yet abstract, representational yet symbolic. This seminal series of landscapes demonstrates the stylistic tensions which make Souza such an instinctive innovator.
These contradictions mirror the inherent tension between nature and civilisation, as Souza's landscape oscillates between the lyrical, the sublime and the malevolent. His works, which often depict the sky as an equally viscous force against the buildings and trees, become treatises on the conflating powers of God, man and the natural world. Rooftops cut sharply into the translucent, glowing morning sky, suggesting not harmony, but a tumultuous battle between dissonant elements, emphasised through the violent brushstroke and dramatic palette. Juxtaposing naturalism with reverential expression, Souza represents the landscape as a scene of primordial power. This work is abstract perhaps not in appearance but in its existential undercurrents. Humanity is conspicuously absent from the metropolis, where religion, modernity and nature coexist in perpetual struggle.